Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
I breathed deeply, inhaling the staunch, unforgiving chill into my lungs. Even the air fought back in Lumenfell. A kingdom where every creature demands to be free, even if it means growing wings and soaring through the trees.
Lumenfell was beautiful. I’d never utter such a truth outside of my mind, but it was truth all the same. It was wild and free and ruthless. It was the jungles and forests our race was born in. The life we abandoned for riches and society. Yes, it’s beautiful—
“But it’s not home,” I whispered. “I am going home tomorrow night, but not to the same life. And not alone. Where are you, little boy? This is one carriage ride we can’t afford to miss.”
I lit on something through the curtain of white. “Is that...?”
A glass dome stuck to the end of the east wing. I assumed it was the east wing because Eadaoin started our tour in the west wing, and we didn’t happen upon any room that doubled as a conservatory, sunroom, or greenhouse.
If the little fox boy was still in the castle, then searching the east wing until it turned me out into the conservatory was my only chance of finding him.
I continued on by myself, making my way out of the soldiers’ barracks. On my way, I lifted diamond necklaces off their displays, gold rings out of their cases, and a silver dagger with a pearl inlay hilt off its pedestal, and tucked it away inside my bottomless pockets.
Now I understand why princesses wore all those heavy skirts and cumbersome gowns. To hide all the weapons.
“Not just the bleeding kind.” I grinned, twirling an emerald-and-gold tiara around my fingertip.
I was going back, packing up my family, and we were leaving. Leaving poverty, leaving Gutter Galley, leaving Kirwan, and leaving Lyrica. Maps upon maps collected dust in that war room, charting out the many lands where we’d be free to live in peace, or with plenty of coin to buy peace, if we were so inclined.
Leave it to the real Princess Emiana to determine if there was goodness beneath Alisdair’s brutality. Let her repair the cease fire she destroyed. Lumenfell was an interesting place with many mysteries, but only one was mine to solve. The rest was her fucking problem.
I wandered the halls, sticking my head in doors, calling for little fox boys, and stealing everything that fit in my pockets. The little boy couldn’t come with me to a land where he’d be jailed on sight as a faeriken spy, but half of these jewels would give him a new life in one of the outer-lying towns of Wind and Wild. I was suddenly thankful Alisdair saw fit to show me where they all were.
If there’s time, I’ll drop him off on my way out of this frozen enigma. If there isn’t time, it will take longer, but I will see to it that he gets somewhere safe.
I paused beneath a ceiling-high window, and looked upon the soldiers’ barracks—stark and staring across the way. I was heading in the right direction and searching every room along the way. No sign of him. Did this castle have a dungeon? Entirely possible considering the man I was dealing with.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
I spun around, my head whipping this way and that. It was that sound again. Despite what Eadaoin insinuated, it didn’t sound like lustful noises. The noise was both close and far away. Like the whisper shared across the room that’s trapped in a dome and escapes to you.
It sounds like...
I pressed the heel of my palm to my racing heart. “Heartbeat.”
Thump-thump.
My feet moved on their own power, carrying me to the end of the hall. I touched the cool stone blocking my way, announcing a dead end, and slid to the right. Stepping lightly, my slippered feet told no tales.
My hand reached the end of the wall where stone was supposed to meet stone... and slipped through.
I couldn’t stop a smile. It was clever. So very clever. At first glance, all you saw was three, bare stone walls—nothing special. Only by getting close did you see that two corners didn’t quite meet, leaving space for a secret.
I pulled back and darted into an empty storeroom. Moving quickly, I upended my pockets, removed all the stolen trinkets, and hid them away behind an old, battered tin bucket. That done, I returned to the secret entrance.
Wedging my shoulder through, I squeezed in—coming out into darkness.
I felt around blindly. Stone. Stone. Stone. Air.
My hand fell through the air, finding a break in the wall. Shuffling forward, my foot hit the bottom step. Maybe this was it? This was where Alisdair hid the boy.
Thump-thump.
Or something else.
A heady mix of nerves, surprise, and excitement sped my pulse and quickened my breath. I didn’t dare to believe I’d ever find Shadowsoul’s cursed heart. Such a thing never entered a mind consumed with finding a way home. But what if I had stumbled upon it?